


ghosts that broke my heart before i met you

by zauberer_sirin



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Bullying, Coulson centric, Coulson's Daddy Issues, Established Relationship, F/M, Friendship, Future Fic, Gen, Male-Female Friendship, Mentors, Mother-Son Relationship, Older Man/Younger Woman, SHIELD Academy, Tahiti is a Magical Place, i just felt like writing some Coulson centric stuff, past Coulson/Audrey
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-13
Updated: 2014-06-13
Packaged: 2018-02-04 12:29:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,215
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1779160
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zauberer_sirin/pseuds/zauberer_sirin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five people Phil Coulson has loved.</p>
            </blockquote>





	ghosts that broke my heart before i met you

**[mom]**

She's late for dinner and he has an exam the next day.

She's always late for dinner and he always has an exam the next day. That's how things are, how they've always been, as far as he remembers.

The first thing she does when she gets home is take off her ugly nurse shoes – she's not a nurse, she's just a secretary there, but she has to wear the shoes anyway. The second thing she does is smell what he has prepared for them in the oven.

"Casserole again?"

"That's the only thing I know how to make, mom," he protests.

She gives him a hello kiss on the cheek. She smells of disinfectant.

"I'll warm it up while you take a shower," he tells his mother, putting his textbooks away.

He cleans the kitchen while the water is running in the next room. He likes this house, it has a spacious living room/kitchen and it's close to the bus route for his school – they've been here two years. They don't move as often as they used to and he is beginning to believe home can be something other than transitory. It was worse after his father died and his mother couldn't hold a job because he had to take care of a young boy. They had no money - less than they have now, if that's even possible. They were moving constantly. He remembers once they had to leave their house in the middle of the night and go out the fire escape because they couldn't pay back rent. He was twelve.

Those were the bad days.

These are the bad days still, he guesses, but it doesn't look like it anymore. His mother comes out of the bathroom and they sit close to one another on the kitchen table and the food is not great but she compliments it anyway, she always does, even when she is tired and grumpy from a twelve-hour shift behind a desk and she is tired and grumpy most nights, and that's when she makes it home in time – most nights he has to go to sleep before she comes back and he leaves her dinner in the oven and they don't have the chance to ask about their respective days and the day feels a lot shittier for that. So yeah, even among the bad days this is a good one, at least they get to see each other and they get to share hospital gossip and school gossip and Phil Coulson, at sixteen, is happy.

"Do you have practice tomorrow?" his mother asks.

He shakes his head. "An exam."

"Oh, dreadful."

"Yeah."

They smile at each other. The tiredness staining his mother's features disappears a bit when she smiles. He's a straight-A student. At some point he figured he kind of _had_ to be. His mom has enough to worry about without having to worry how well he does at school. And if he ever wants to go to college this is the only way. So he studies and plays basketball and plays football and tries not to be too much of a bother.

"Well, don't get cocky," his mother says, seeing his smug expression of confidence on his academic prowess.

She kicks his shin under the table. It makes him laugh.

These are the bad days, actually, but he will only remember the happiness, the closeness to another human being.

 

 

**[fury]**

He's been clocking the most hours in target practice.

Not because he is dedicated – _he is_ dedicated – but because what other option does he have.

He's been getting top marks in everything except in shooting. And you can't get into the Academy without top grades in shooting. Not even if Agent Fury vouches for him, not even if Coulson was his personal pick in this year's draft.

That's why Phil Coulson is here, past midnight, in the shooting range.

The place is so eerie when closed up and dark. With the gun in his hand and the echo of his less-than-perfect shots ringing in his ears Coulson feels like the last person on Earth right now, in this lonely concrete structure.

He isn't, of course.

It's not long before Nick Fury catches him in the act.

"Somebody told me we were spending too much money on the electricity bill this month," Fury says. "And I wondered... How can that be? Now I find out it's just our Phillip Coulson clocking unauthorized hours at the range."

He's right. Coulson shouldn't be here. He's snuck inside the building. He broke the rules. It doesn't matter. He doesn't want it on record, how many hours of target practice it's going to take him to _not_ get any better at this. It can reflect badly on his file. And he doesn't want the other candidates to know he's struggling.

"I apologize, sir," he says, placing his gun on the table, willing to accept any kind of punishment for it.

Unlike most of the candidates for the Academy he is not afraid of Fury.

He just doesn't like the man. He knows that's probably unfair – he vaguely remembers his presence around the edges of his father's life when he was a child. Coulson knows his father had been directly under Fury's orders at times. And Fury likes to talk about that. And Coulson doesn't want to hear it. Fury is not doing him any favors, being so generous with the information. Coulson barely remembers what his father was actually like at this point, and he prefers it this way. 

"Take another shot," Fury tells him, gesturing and grabbing a spare headset.

He does.

Fury gives him a sideways look when they check the target.

" _Again_. Slow fire. Five rounds."

Same thing. He doesn't seem to be able to get his scores higher than 82% of accuracy at best. 

Fury takes off his headphones. Coulson guesses that means he's realized it's a lost cause.

There's a beat or two, a moment of charged silence between the two men.

"It's the recoil," Fury says.

"Excuse me?"

"Your problem. It's the recoil."

"No, it's not. I _do not_ flinch," Coulson says between his teeth.

Phil Coulson, at nineteen, is angry.

"I did not say that. But your body tenses right between your finger pulling the trigger and the bullet actually making it out. It's pretty common. Your instructor should have noticed this."

"You can tell that just by watching me shoot twice?" He asks Fury.

"You don't know me very well yet. Do you, son?"

Coulson swallows. He knows what this means. He knows what this means for him.

"Sir... I don't think I can be a SHIELD agent if I recoil when I shoot. I don't think they'll let me."

And for a moment the idea is too unbearable. He knows he didn't think it through, he accepted Fury's offer on a whim. He knows his mother doesn't like this, he knows she'd have preferred he went to college, and she worries that it's his father's death and the unresolved issues around it which are dictating Coulson's decision, so many years after the fact. And she might be right. But now he wants this, he wants to be here.

"I don't think you should be making decisions for the top brass here," Fury says. "We'll determine what you can and can't be."

He says that but rules are rules for everyone. He knows the kind of score he needs.

He takes up the gun again, practices his stance.

"What's up with your shoulders? You can't shoot for shit, if you are this stiff."

Coulson bites his lip. "I know."

"You have all the time in the world here. No one is rushing you to take the shot. Calm the hell down."

"Out there in the field I won't have time to calm _the hell_ down," Coulson says. Sometimes he wonders if that's what happened to his father – he caved under pressure, he took too long to take the shot that might have saved his life. The report said it had been his own fault.

"Yeah, but we are not _out there in the field_ right now. Are we, son? We are here in the shooting range at one in the morning like fools."

The man is infurating. Coulson is not ten years old. He doesn't need to be talked down to. Still he does as he is told and tries to relax his stance, shoulders loose. And he takes his time.

" _Slightly_ better," Fury comments after the shot. 

It's not good enough, Coulson thinks. He shrugs, putting the gun away, feeling an ugly, dark rage take root at the bottom of his stomach.

"And don't call me _son_ ," he tells the other man.

"What?" Agent Fury asks. 

"I'm not your son, don't patronize me."

Nick Fury looks amused at that. Almost impressed. He nods. "Okay, _soldier_."

He leaves the room for a moment to get new rounds.

"Try with this," he gives Coulson his own gun. "Told you it was a pretty common problem. Easily fixable, too. There are both fake and live rounds in this. So you can't tell. So you'll get over your dumbass recoil problem and we can all go back to getting you a badge. Okay?"

Coulson weights the gun in his hand. It's not like the ones he uses in practice. 

"Yes, sir. I'll work hard."

"Oh I'm sure you will," he says, moving away.

"Wait. And your gun?"

He hurries to give it back but Fury shakes his head.

"The fix works better with an unfamiliar gun. You can give it back to me once you've reached 90%," he says, dismissively, turning his back to Coulson.

The senior agent walks away, chuckling. 

Coulson will remember that sound.

 

 

**[may]**

She is younger than him and she looks even younger the day she is assigned to his unit in Ops training, straight out of recruitment. She's so young he wonders if she should even be here, but he's read she's some kind of prodigy. She's small and she wanders the hallways alone on her way from and to classes and she eats alone most of the time and Coulson's protective instincts kick in, even though he's read her file, knows what she can do – he knows it's false, that first instinct, it doesn't have to do with the girl, it's just that it's his first time leading a team, outside exercises, and for the first time he feels the inminent weight of other people's lives in his hands. In a few months he'll be out of here, a real agent in real missions. Real danger.

Melinda May's first week in the Academy Coulson passes trying to help her avoid the inevitable pranks. They call it pranking but it's really bullying. It's physical and harsh. It's traditional and everyone more or less looks the other way. Coulson thinks it's stupid, mostly, and random cruelty against new student is not going to build team trust or resistance in the would-be agents. 

As far as hazing rookies go the ones she'll have to look out for are the ones in John Garrett's team. They love that shit. Coulson catches them glancing May's way in the cafeteria. She notices it too.

"You're new here," he tells her. "They'll want to put you through hell. Stick with your team and you'll be fine."

May nods. She has learned to take orders from Coulson as team leader pretty quickly, even though her pre-Academy records say that's not her best quality precisely.

She won't be fine, he soon realizes. A girl like her, who looks like that, who is that shy, who has the kind of reputation May had even as a candidate. She's the prize this year. Coulson knows how those guys (and they are mostly invariably guys) think: if they can break someone so supposedly strong they can prove how strong they are. It's distasteful.

Coulson profiles her. That's what he does, that's what he does better than anyone else around. That's why Fury and the other instructors put him in charge of a team. There's not much on May's file. Nothing he couldn't tell inside the first five minutes he met Melinda May: shy, kind, warm but volatile, easily ticked off. She's impatient. She doesn't like to be ordered around. Doesn't like to be teased. Good education. She's not spoiled but... he can tell things about people, where they come from. Upper middle class. First generation, or maybe second. There's a rumor going around that her mother is CIA. There's another rumor going around that her mother belongs to an organization darker and more secret than SHIELD. In any case May seems intimately acquainted with the concept of hierarchy. And she is talented. Hands down the most talented person he's seen come through these doors and he wonders why the hell Fury put her in Coulson's team, virtually in Coulson's _charge_ given how he's the veteran of his class.

There's something about the extraordinary nature of May's skills as a prospective agent that unnerves him and makes him feel sorry for her in a way. He suspects she thinks those skills can get her out of any situation, because they probably have so far. Being around genuises makes Coulson uneasy. But it's not an ego thing. They tend to be distrustful and Coulson might not be a fully fledged SHIELD agent just yet but he knows that in their line of work mistrust can get you killed.

Phil Coulson never thought he'd be an advocate for team work but he's changing these days, here he is, beginning to think it's a good thing when you find someone who has your back.

"I know pranks and I don't think this qualifies as a prank," May says when Coulson finds her chained to the shower while the cold water runs, falling over her shivering body.

Coulson uncuffs her. "Just wait it out."

"If pneumonia doesn't get me first," she comments.

But May doesn't wait it out.

Next time they try something she beats one of Garrett's boys to an actual bloody pulp, not just a figure of speech. It looks worse than it really is. But it looks bad. And it's not like there aren't a couple of this incidents in the Academy every year but the only reason why May is not on her way to suspension from class is because a group of first years coming off target practice had witnessed how the guy "started it". Or maybe the first years were just trying to protect their own. Coulson is grateful for that – he's already deep in future plans for his team and May is an essential part of it. And personally he likes her, he thinks she could use a friend. And so could he.

"You can't do that," Coulson tells her. "You have to play the game. They just want to see you can endure it. We've all been there."

Coulson remembers his first weeks in the Academy. People knowing that Fury came to recruit him personally did nothing for his popularity. It wasn't fun. And it was useless. 

He doesn't understand. May is not really a violent person. She's just too young in every sense to control her temper. But this seems an overreaction. Coulson also knows May is smart as they come and he's beginning to suspect this was strategic – she was getting fed up with the harassment and this was the quickiest way to put a stop to it.

"I broke his ribs," the girl says.

"That might as well be but..." he feels like he's losing authority as team leader here. May doesn't look like she is listening. He has to supress the urge to smile because she's right, what she's done is nothing other than justice. "Okay, okay, he had it coming, I get it. Are you okay? Are you hurt? Did you swing by the infirmary?"

May shrugs. She holds up her right hand to him – bloodied, bruised skin. He doesn't want to see how the other guy looks.

He sighs. "Come with me."

She raises one eyebrow when he leads them both to a supplies closet but she says nothing. Coulson fishes a first aid kit from the back of one of the shelves. He took med training twice, figured it wouldn't hurt to have someone on the team who knew this stuff inside out, figured it wouldn't hurt if it was him.

"Wow, you really hit him," he says, looking at the ugly cuts on her knuckle.

"If you hit hard enough the first time they don't come back looking for trouble."

Raised by wolves, this one, Coulson thinks, despite the good manners he's noticed when she eats her meals. He is not really used to people like this. May takes him by surprise.

He takes her arm in his and rolls the sleeve of her uniform up to her elbow. When his fingers touch the inside of her forearm she recoils. He wonders if he's hurt her. Then he notices she has let out a tiny, childish, giggle-like sound.

"You're ticklish," he realizes. He teases her. "Not the greatest trait in this business. Specially if you ever want to go undercover. Spies are never ticklish. Didn't you learn that in orientation?"

She huffs. "I hate undercover. I'm never doing that."

The girl twists her mouth – displaying her emotions so openly, she has a lot to learn. Coulson smiles. Maybe they can help each other. She sucks it up and lets him bandage her hand.

"Thank you, Coulson," she says in a small, honest voice, meeting his eyes like she's rarely done with other people.

"Phil," he says.

"Other first year students call you Coulson."

"My friends call me _Phil_."

May nods.

Coulson grins at her. He doubts she has to worry about being bullied again. But just in case he's going to stay close to her from now on, on the off chance there's someone crazy enough to attempt retaliation. That's what a good leader would do, anyway. Let Melinda May know that she can trust him, that he's got her back.

 

 

**[audrey]**

She defends her genius status' right to be a slob at times, and she supports her theory with many examples of the musical world, current or historical. Chaos breeds creativity. She is not always like this, of course – off season Audrey Nathan is neat and tidy and calm and everything in its right place and she is the perfect fit for Coulson's tailored suits.

But when she has to bury herself in rehearsals, when she is getting to know a piece of music still unfamiliar to her, she forgets about appointments and meals and laundry requirements.

When he walks into the apartment Coulson realizes she's on one of her frenzies. The place is a mess. Not a dirty, disgusting mess. Just a creative-people kind of mess. Like everything else about Audrey's life he finds it kind of charming.

It's weird seeing her in her casual clothes, though, he's not used to that just yet. 

He sees the sheets of music spread all over the living room. Audrey was already telling the story before he crossed the door.

"... but Louis, the idiot – and I told him, I said _Couldn't this have waited until after the weekend?_ I said _Not today, Louis, I made plans with Phil_ but he said the guys we are subbing for were doing Ravel and you know Ravel makes me antsy."

"I know," Coulson says, stroking her arm. "It's okay."

She gives him a quick kiss on the edge of his mouth and focuses back on her work almost in the same beat.

"Sorry. I know we had a date. I didn't cook anything. Can you get some takeout?"

Coulson is relieved – he didn't really feel like cooking tonight either. He sometimes does that, when Audrey is too busy, and he enjoys it, it's a ritual and he loves to show off, reaching that point in the relationship (he hasn't with that many women before), but he's just too worn out today.

He has taken two planes to get here. Because in real life there are no regular flight connections between the super secret medical facility where you work on a super secret dehumanizing project and your girlfriend's city.

And it's usually – this is usually what he needs, seeing Audrey's face after a day of horror at the Project. Audrey who thinks he is brave and dashing. Audrey who thinks he saved her. Audrey who thinks he'll always protect her.

Even when Coulson knows it's not true, when he knows for a fact that he has saved no one, that he can't protect shit – even then Audrey's faith is normally enough to bring him back. He can usually walk arm in arm with her into a five star resturant in whatever cultural capital of the nation she happens to be playing in this month and believe that this is where he belongs. This is the Phil Coulson that matters, not the one who hurts people.

But lately not even this, this refuge, this life that is not like his life at all, is enough to soothe Coulson. He can't wash away the fucking filth off his hands. The contrast between his workday, his mission, and the stolen moments he can give Audrey, is beginning to be too staggering.

And this woman is doing big, wonderful things in the world, in her own way; hearing her play Coulson has no doubt her job is just as vital to humanity as SHIELD's. And she is not hurting anybody. Coulson claims to be one of the good guys but it's hard to sustain that claim when your job involves watching a man lose control of his speech as consequence of experiments you have authorized. Nothing is really enough. To the point where he only sees one possible option if he wants to keep his soul or his sanity.

He reaches out to touch his hand to Audrey's shoulder as she works but she doesn't seem to notice it. He withdraws.

"What would you think if I took a little time off work?" he asks her.

She's bent over the desk, making corrections to the music. Sometimes her fingertips smell of pencil lead.

"Time off? I thought you were in the middle of a big project."

"Yeah, but maybe it will be put on hold soon, and then I can take a breather."

"I didn't know SHIELD agents took breathers," she teases him, giving him a playful glance over her shoulder.

No, they don't, Coulson thinks.

"But if I did... would you like to go on a trip somewhere, together?"

"Sure. As long as it's after my Chicago commitment, I'm all yours," Audrey says sweetly, but lightly, not catching the note of desperation in Coulson's voice.

It's better this way, he thinks. He shouldn't burden her with this. To Audrey he still is the heroic SHIELD agent who saved her from a violent stalker. She doesn't need to know what else he is. What he is when he leaves her house. He wants her to imagine he stops existing once he walks out of that door – that he has no life but these charming moments between them.

He hugs her from behind, breathing in her smell.

"What do you want to order?"

"I don't care," she says, laughing and patting his hand. "Whatever you like. Thai."

Every time he comes back from a trip to the Guest House it's like this; the way he latches onto the normality of her life, the easiness of their relationship. Today he has seen two men writhing in pain from the severe burns the experimental drugs have caused. Tonight he just wants this: to sit on her couch and order food and get lost in Audrey's laughter and only exist during those moments when she loves him.

 

 

**[skye]**

She doesn't stop for anyone, certainly not for him.

She wakes up with a start, in the middle of the night. Coulson narrows his eyes at her, trying to make out her frame in the darkness. She is moving under the sheets. Her small gestures like a hurricane in here. 

By the time he turns on their bedside light Skye has already grabbed her laptop from Coulson's desk.

"The exploit, I figured it out," she explains, voice strangely awake, so fast.

She jumps back into bed and starts working immediately, computer on her knees. Coulson sits up, drawing the bed covers away from him. Skye is in her underwear and a shirt and Coulson never imagined that it would all come to this – that he would be woken up by his lover at three in the morning because suddenly she had come up with a strategy to catch the villain of the hour. Though the being woken up in a frenzy of world-saving activity is no more bizarre than sleeping with Skye's arm around his waist and the sense of safety that comes with that, so Coulson doesn't really question either. This is his life, right now, and as much as he is making grumpy let-me-sleep-faces at Skye right now he can't lie and say he dislikes it.

"It's going to take a couple of hours because I was being really stupid with this and now I have to re-code basically everything, but I get it. We got them," she says, turning to flash a smug smile at him.

Coulson sighs, resigned but pleased. He's not going to stop her.

She's been working on cracking this system for two days, her and Fitz, which is not a normal length of time for Skye – but the bad guys are wising up on their software and fast, these days, she has explained to Coulson. She had been hitting a wall on this the whole day today, a kind of writer's block for hackers, because she explained in words he could understand. 

Coulson is not even surprised she seems to have found the solution while sleeping.

"Should I make coffee?" he asks, pressing his mouth against Skye's shoulder, feeling the warmth under the fabric. It's his one of his shirts but it already smells completely like her.

"That would help a lot, actually," she says, not looking back at him this time but leaning towards the touch anyway.

He finds it hard to climb out of the bed and leave her, for a moment. He looks at her hair all messy and fallen over her cheeks and shoulder, her wild face of competence.

He touches her back, tracing the line of her spine with his fingertips, slow and intently.

"Hey, that's not fair. I'm trying to concentrate here."

She says that. But she turns around and presses her mouth against his, hard, twisting her fingers into the hem of his t-shirt. Skye can't be stopped. And that's okay, Coulson doesn't want to stop her. Not in anything, definitely not in this. He lets her run her tongue across the roof of his mouth and he lets her extract low, moaning sounds from the back of his throat. He feels her smile against him.

"No wonder I can't get any work done around these parts," she says, pulling away, her hand still fisted into his clothes, not letting go. Coulson still pressed close against her, body heavy with sleep and desire. He leans over and gives her another quick kiss. Skye chuckles. "Okay, okay, how about you get us those coffees? When you come back you can watch the master at work. If you are nice I'll even teach you a couple of tricks – so next time you are faced with a blocked system you won't have to rely on me."

She's serious, actually.

"You don't think I'm too old to learn computer science?" he asks, almost genuine.

She puts the laptop away for a moment. Propping herself on her knees she throws her arms around Coulson's neck.

"I think you know I reject that premise altogether," she says and kisses him again, slower this time.

It's a strange, almost quiet moment. He feels content with letting it go on for a while, this breathing each other in. These are not quiet days. They have a lot of work and there's the issue of Skye's strange origins, their recent discoveries about that. And his own medical condition, Coulson reflects, which any day can turn on him, like a Sword of Damocles for the resurrected. It's not a time to do this. It's not a time to be happy. But he is, at least right in this split of second with his hand splayed over Skye's hipbone, feeling the shape of it against his palm. 

"Coffee?" he reminds her, pulling away, grinning against the sound of disappointment Skye makes.

"Right, right."

She lets him go, begrudingly. But as soon as he gets out of the bed she is back to work, that expression of enthrallment she always has when figuring things out at her computer. Coulson takes in the image for a moment. He loves her like this – exuding confidence, knowing that the things she does very few people in the world can do. That kind of righteous fire that possesses her when they are on a mission, on the right kind of mission. It's hard to tear his eyes from her (it has always been) and walk out of the bedroom but he does.

He goes through the dark hallways towards the kitchen, barefoot. They've been in the base months and still it's a bit eerie at night. It's not quite home yet, but it's getting there. He can feel it. He wonders how much of this optimism has to do with his Skye-filled nights.

He puts the coffee machine to work with mechanical movements, out of blind habit. Part of him is still a bit asleep, despite the inconvenient three-in-the-morning-kissing and the inconvenient arousal. The incovenient young woman inside his bed and his life.

Coulson stands there, in the middle of the room in the middle of the night, cold tiles under his feet, thinking about her.

He likes this moment. This moment of him here in the kitchen, making coffee, making coffee _for her_ , to help out, to be of some use to her. And Skye in his room, like she owns it, working, doing what she does best, sitting crosslegged on his bed, sheets and covers tangling around her legs, still smelling of sex. It's a good image. It's a good image to come back to. He's always happy to come back to Skye.

He doesn't know what he'll take from this or if it's ever going to stop.

He doesn't know which moment he'll remember, but he hopes is one like this.

Or better yet, the moment after this one, when he walks into his bedroom again and Skye looks up from her laptop and looks at him and looks at him _like that_. Yes, that's the moment Coulson likes. Or the next one, when he hands her the hot cup of coffee and Skye grabs his t-shirt and brings his mouth down to hers for a thank-you kiss. That's his favorite moment. Or the next one. Or every moment after that.


End file.
